MARCH 31, 2007

Ascanelli moves to Toro Rosso

There have been rumours since last summer that Gerhard Berger was planning to get engineer Giorgio Ascanelli as the technical director of Scuderia Toro Rosso and that deal has now been done and Ascanelli will start work at the team next weekend in Malaysia. Ascanelli has been the technical director of Maserati Corse Competizione in recent years. Ascanelli worked with Toro Rosso team boss Gerhard Berger at both Ferrari and McLaren in the early 1990s and then became Ayrton Senna's race engineer at McLaren before returning to Ferrari to work with Berger once again. Ascanelli then moved into research and development and ultimately departed Ferrari for Maserati.

The news is no great surprise as Berger and Ascanelli are friends of long standing.

The team's current technical director Alex Hitzinger has had roles since he joined the team at the end of last year and he will now concentrate on his other job, which was to lead the team developing new technologies at Red Bull.